Writing a Letter of Recommendation - Howard Hughes Medical ...

WRITING A LETTER OF
RECOMMENDATION
As a beginning independent investigator, chances are you will soon have to write
a letter of recommendation on behalf of a student, a postdoc, or even a colleague.
Your job as letter writer will be to describe the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses
as they relate to the position or program in a way that is both thoughtful
and personal. A letter that falls short of this goal will be of little value to those
evaluating applications and will not help the candidate get what he or she is after.
So, it pays to put in the necessary effort and time to write a “good” letter. This
chapter provides insights and advice from experienced investigators on how to
do so. It is not meant to be prescriptive but rather to offer some suggestions from
which you can pick and choose.
BEING ASKED TO WRITE A LETTER
Letters of recommendation are ubiquitous in an academic research career. If
you teach one or more senior-level undergraduate courses or have undergraduate
students in your laboratory, you might have to write dozens of letters a year as
students become graduate-school bound or look for employment. If you do not
teach undergraduates and have primarily graduate students and postdocs in your
lab, you will have significantly fewer letters to write—maybe for only one or two
people each year.
In addition to the people in your own lab, graduate students and postdocs in
your department may ask you to write letters for them when they apply for fellowships
or seek new positions. Colleagues might also ask you to write letters of
recommendation on their behalf for various promotions or awards, but that may
not happen too often until you are more established.
For Whom Should You Write?
As a mentor, you have an obligation to support students and postdocs in your lab
in their job search and to help them find a good match for their abilities and aspirations.
If they ask you to write a recommendation letter, it is customary to support
them in this way. The best thing to do is to sit down with them and discuss
their plans before they start applying for jobs. If their career goals are unrealistic,
talk about what they need to do to become more competitive or help steer them
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